The reduction of one euro in the price of the canteen for Agen public school students was voted on at the last municipal council. It will be applied on September 1st. This emblematic measure of the new mayor of the city of Jasmin deeply divides the municipal council. This aid will in fact not be granted to private schools. “It’s legal, but it’s not a choice of the heart,” says the opposition. “It’s a political choice,” assumes the majority.
Opposition MP Baya Kherkhach does not beat around the bush. This measure of the majority has, according to her, a “discriminatory character which denies the social reality of certain children”. “It’s an assumed political choice of a left-wing team,” retorts Naïma Lasmak, the deputy mayor of Agen. The drop of one euro in the cost of meals for all Agenais students in public schools in the city of Jasmin deeply divides the municipal assembly. It revives the old debate between the public and the private as well as the classic left-right divide.
The revision of the school catering scales was adopted at the last municipal council. The two opposition groups – one is formed by the running mates of Jean Dionis, outgoing MoDem mayor beaten in the last elections and the other by those of Sébastien Delbosq’s RN – voted against.
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The old rates voted on December 1, 2025 providing for an increase of 1.6% for the start of the 2026 school year have therefore been repealed. Next September 1, the reduction of one euro, whatever the family coefficient, an emblematic measure of candidate Laurent Bruneau, will be effective. Prices will thus range from 90 cents to €4.60 per meal according to the brackets established by the CAF coefficient.
“It’s a violent choice”
During the council meeting, Louis Tandonnet (Agen at the heart) deployed several arguments to explain his camp’s disagreement: an insufficiently enriched summary note, the absence of savings to compensate for this initiative (“Politics is not just gifts, it is also arbitration”), targeting imprecise (“children from outside the city, but poor” could have been concerned), the lack of information on a possible repercussion of an increase in billing linked to the new central kitchen…
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Among all these reasons, the one relating to private schools triggered a standoff. Until then, they could obtain an equivalent reduction by contacting the town hall. “Are you removing this aid for private education?” worried Louis Tandonnet. Yes, confirmed Ms. Lasmak. “It’s a violent choice because you put your ideology at the center of the debate, and not the well-being of the child,” reacted Clémence Brandolin Robert.
“I find you puffed up to talk about precariousness”
And the leader of the opposition added: “In private schools, there are also children who do not eat their fill.” Echoing the famous reply of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to François Mitterrand in 1974: “You do not have a monopoly on the heart”.
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Marjorie Delcros recalled that private schools under contract “are financed by several means”. The deputy in charge of education cited the day school package paid by the town hall, the bills paid by families, and patronage. “It is up to parents who make this private choice to create a balance of power with their establishment,” she stressed. “The latter is not obliged to increase canteen prices.”
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“Personally, I find you puffed up to talk about precariousness”, launched Amanda Sanz towards the opponents before exhuming a file. Ten years earlier, alongside other parents, she demonstrated in front of the town hall. “Your majority had just passed the daycare closing from 6:30 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. The mayor received us. We had to explain to him that choosing 15 minutes was not trivial for certain families. It penalized women and particularly those who had precarious jobs. In schools private, the daycare continued to open until 6:30 p.m. This did not disturb you at the time.
